The last recorded murder occurred at 11:16 pm on 1 February, when five people were shot by two gunmen in Harlem.

Daniel Nagin, a professor of public policy and statistics at Carnegie Mellon University, said the figures from New York are part of a trend which has going on for the past 20 years.

He told the Guardian: "Crime rates, and homicides rates in particular, have declined very substantially since the early 1990s."

He added: "There's been much discussion about the reason for the declines among criminologists, economists, about why that happens. On that issue, I've never found any of the explanations particularly convincing.

"One reason they fail to explain is: why is it homicide rates have been declining in many places across the world? In most of western Europe, homicide rates have declined by 50%."

Other big cities in the US have also recorded comparably low crime figures in 2014, such as Chicago with its lowest number of murders since 1965.